Sunday, 22 November 2015

East Coast Road

A haven for food lovers, but a nightmare for parking. This is what this area means to me -- usually. So the smart thing to do is to take a bus. In my younger days, the Red House Bakery (now under restoration, to the left of the picture) was a really interesting place to me. You could choose your bread or whatever morsel and then have them in peace somewhere in the bowels of this bakery which looked small on the outside but had courtyards once you entered. Established in 1925 it was closed in 2003, deemed unsafe. A Jew started the bakery shop which was later taken over by a Hainanese seaman who apparently paid only $600 as "coffee money" to take over the bakery. That was in the 1930s. Information taken from Infopedia.

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Old shophouses

Walkways

Old shophouses have covered walkways that you can stroll along and look at window displays.

Tiles

Commonly found on facade of old shophouses.

Signboards

Traditional ones are those in thick wood -- gold letterings over black.

Green windows

Sun glasses for the windows -- old fashioned green window panes

Art

Probably built between the1900s and 1940s during which decorative motifs were common.

Quaint gables

Notice the little "knob" at the end of the roof ridge? Ronald G Knapp's book, China's Old Dwellings, has good description on the various forms of gables. Apparently, in the old days, the corners of the roof ridges were reinforced by such knobs (which may take the form of more decorative motifs ) to "weigh down" the roofs as these corners were believed to be most vulnerable during strong winds.